Wednesday, June 16, 2010

More Rocks!

Well all, today was quite busy and productive at the site. Yesterday was all about the weeds, today was all about the rocks... that is after we finished getting through the roots of the weeds. I don't know if anyone has used a mattock ( I really don't know if that's how it's spelled either) but it's like a pick ax with a flat edge on one side. Or, as I've come to think of it... a pain in the back, arms, abs, basically all of the above muscle groups. Anyway, we used it a bit yesterday and a lot today. But our stoney outcrop is beginning to look a lot more like an archaeological investigation! :) (I apologize, my blog would be a lot more interesting with pictures but for some reason, blogger doesn't want to upload them). The stones were skillfully cleared by one of our resident Australians (Kirsten) and also by Megan. After disturbing several red aunt colonies that is. The day was hot again! Especially for Ireland but it reminded me of our hot day's on the dig at the Bradford-Perley House in Ken Caryl Valley. Another element that brought me back to that was the large amounts of stones! These, however, are not sandstone!

Finn instructed us to go down 20 centimeters and that will be our real starting level, clearing away debris first. A lot of the debris surrounding our wall stones is glass!! It appears that when this field wasn't as covered in grass, or the stones, that people used this for glass breaking target practice because it was almost like a glass pit! Our team worked really well together. Jean Marco had designated a spot far from our units (or cuttings as they call them here) to dump our wheelbarrows and trying to push a wheelbarrow full of dirt over these darn grass hillocks is nearly impossible. Needless to say, as the day went on, what Jean Marco thought was a good distance away from our units, is slowly beginning to close in distance :).

As I said, our pile of stones is looking more like an archaeological site than... well... I a pile of stones. On one side it appears to be a definite fallen wall but some of the stones stayed in a concave pattern horizontally, but on the other side (where I was working) there appears to be a line of stones with the stones in line vertically (I swear I wish I could post my pictures so you could see) so we aren't sure how this stone wall fell. Some of us think that it may have been an archway that collapsed. This is a good hypothesis I think because this corner area may have been an entrance to the cloister where the brothers gathered to contemplate. I'm not sure how accurate I am though knowing nothing about Irish architecture. So, at the end of the day, we were all mainly moving very slowly having mattox'ed and shoveled and troweled our little arms off. :) Tomorrow is my first field trip with IAFS and we get to spend the day in Dublin! I'm very excited as we'll get to do an architectural tour of an area of the city, then tour the museum and finally to a harbor town that I don't remember the name of (I'll have to clear that mystery up tomorrow.)

Well, it's a short post tonight, but it was a tiring day. I should have an interesting report from Dublin tomorrow!!

Love to all and miss you!!

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